In his latest stream on Twitch (via Fightful), Kenny Omega spoke about his first match with Bryan Danielson in 2006 and why they decided to go with a comedy routine. The match happened in PWG, and at one point the two said their name was John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt before dancing. They had a more serious match fifteen years later at AEW Grand Slam.
He said: “That’s what we were going for. Just do a match that people won’t forget, that’s my worry. PWG, at that time, reminded me a lot of current-day wrestling. PWG, they don’t have TV, so they really had to rely on banger matchups non-stop. They came to a point where it’s like, what differentiates banger match from banger match from banger match? It’s going to be the same. I don’t want to have a ‘good’ match with Bryan Danielson, of course I do, but I want to have a match that will be remembered. That’s the intent. Sure, there’s a bajillion approaches you can take to have a match that will be remembered. That’s just the approach we took and people to this day talk about that match, which is wonderful. The coolest thing is that Bryan gets it. He understands that the intention of wrestling is to captivate the fans in any way. It’s not about who can kick more, slap more, slap harder. Who can do the most chops, who can make your chest bleed? Who can get suplexed on their head, but then stand up and then do a suplex? Again, it’s not that. If none of it makes sense, if it’s not in the proper context, it was not set up the right way… That is that.”
